The Street Boy Pointed at the Billionaire’s Fiancée—Then Revealed Why His Daughter’s Shaved Head Was No Illness

The Street Boy Pointed at the Billionaire’s Fiancée—Then Revealed Why His Daughter’s Shaved Head Was No Illness

Ernest Sterling pushed his daughter’s wheelchair slowly along the winding paths of Central Park, and every sound seemed sharper than it should have been.

The wheels crackled over dry leaves.

A dog barked in the distance.

A cyclist rang a bell near the west drive.

Somewhere behind them, children laughed—bright, careless laughter that made Ernest’s throat tighten, because Valerie used to sound like that.

Before the weakness.

Before the silence.

Before the hospital bracelets, the careful whispering, the visits from specialists, and the endless words that had slowly crushed the life out of their home.

Complicated.

Aggressive.

Rare.

Uncertain.

Valerie sat motionless beneath a cream wool blanket tucked over her legs. An IV bag hung from the side of the wheelchair, swaying gently each time the chair rolled over uneven stone. Her hands, once always moving—writing, sketching, braiding and unbraiding her hair, tapping rhythms on restaurant tables—now rested limp and pale in her lap.

And her hair was gone.

That was still the part Ernest couldn’t accept.

For seventeen years, Valerie had cared for that hair like it was something sacred. When she was little, her mother would sit her on the bathroom counter and brush it in slow, patient strokes. When she got older, she learned to do it herself, letting the black shine fall down her back like silk. She had trimmed it carefully, protected it from pool chlorine, spent ridiculous amounts of time choosing conditioners and satin pillowcases.

Now her scalp was bare.

Completely shaved.

Celeste had told him it was better that way.

“She was losing it anyway,” his fiancée had said, her voice low and soothing, the way she always spoke when she wanted to sound indispensable. “It was coming out in clumps. She was crying. I helped her before it got worse.”

Ernest had believed her because he had wanted something—anything—to make sense.

Valerie had been too weak to explain.

Too tired to protest.

Too gone to do anything but stare at the wall.

So he had believed Celeste.

He hated himself for how easy that had been.

They reached a curve where the path widened near a bench mottled with autumn light. Ernest slowed the wheelchair, then stopped beneath a tree whose leaves had begun to brown at the edges.

“You want to rest here?” he asked quietly.

Valerie did not answer with words.

She blinked once and shifted her eyes toward the lake.

That was how she answered now. Small movements. Tiny permissions. Barely enough to call communication.

Ernest crouched in front of her and adjusted the blanket around her knees. “You’re cold.”

Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.

He looked at her face—too thin, too drained, too old for seventeen—and a wave of helpless fury washed through him so fast he nearly stood back up just to have somewhere to put it.

He had built hotels in three countries. He had negotiated mergers no one thought possible. He had stared down men twice his age when he was twenty-nine and made them fold over figures on paper.

But he could not fix this.

He could not fix his daughter.

He could not fix the fact that while he had been attending emergency board meetings and late-night strategy calls, his only child had disappeared inch by inch inside his own house.

A shadow moved near the bench.

Ernest looked up sharply.

A boy stood there, maybe thirteen or fourteen, thin as wire, wearing a coat too big for him and sneakers that had split open along the sides. His dark curls were flattened beneath a knit cap, and his eyes—sharp, alert, too watchful for his age—went straight to Valerie.

Then to Ernest.

Then back to Valerie again.

Ernest’s body tensed instantly. “Move along.”

The boy didn’t move.

Instead, he said, very clearly, “Your daughter isn’t sick.”

Ernest straightened.

“What did you say?”

The boy swallowed, but held his ground.

“I said your daughter isn’t sick.” His voice dropped. “It was your fiancée who shaved her head.”

For a second, the whole park seemed to go silent.

No leaves.

No dogs.

No children.

No city.

Only that sentence, hanging in the cold air like something impossible and final.

Ernest stepped toward the boy so fast the bench clipped the back of his leg. “Watch your mouth.”

The boy flinched, but didn’t run.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“You don’t know anything about my daughter.”

“I know her name is Valerie Sterling,” the boy shot back. “I know she used to hand out sandwiches near Bethesda Terrace on Saturdays with the church van. I know she gave me her scarf last winter when my fingers were blue and I couldn’t stop shaking. I know she had hair down to here—” He touched the middle of his back. “And I know she didn’t shave it because she was sick. Your fiancée did it.”

Ernest stared at him.

There was something almost offensive about how direct the boy was. No hesitation. No performance. No begging.

Just certainty.

Valerie’s fingers twitched.

Ernest turned toward her.

For the first time that afternoon, her eyes had shifted fully away from the lake. They were fixed on the boy.

And in them—faint but unmistakable—was recognition.

The boy saw Ernest notice.

“My name’s Nico,” he said more quietly. “She knows me.”

Ernest looked between them. “How?”

Nico took one careful step closer, keeping his hands where Ernest could see them. “She used to talk to me sometimes. Not like I was garbage. Not like I was invisible. Just… normal. She asked me once what books I liked. Nobody asks stuff like that if they don’t actually see you.”

Ernest’s throat tightened, but his mind was already racing in darker directions.

Street kids learned things.

They watched.

They survived by noticing what rich people missed.

Still, he heard himself saying, “If you’re trying to get money—”

“I’m not.” Nico’s face hardened. “I’m trying to stop you from letting that woman finish whatever she started.”

Ernest felt anger rise again, hot and defensive. “Finish?”

Nico’s gaze moved to the IV bag.

“She made her look worse on purpose.”

Ernest took another step toward him. “How do you know that?”

Nico hesitated for the first time. Then he reached inside his coat.

Ernest’s hand flew instinctively toward his phone, ready to call security, police, anyone—

But Nico pulled out something small and cracked.

A phone.

An old smartphone with a shattered corner and a faded moon sticker on the back.

Valerie made a sound.

It was tiny. Barely there.

But it was a sound.

Ernest stared at the phone, then at his daughter.

“Val?”

Her lips trembled. Her eyes stayed on the device.

Nico held it out. “She dropped this from the back service stairs the night your fiancée shaved her head.”

The world tilted.

Ernest took the phone.

It was light. Dead. Cheap. The kind Valerie had used before he upgraded her and before Celeste started saying screens made her headaches worse.

“Where did you get this?” Ernest asked.

“I was sleeping in the alley behind your townhouse that week.” Nico said it without shame. “Not because I wanted to. Because it was raining and the loading dock overhang stayed dry. I heard somebody crying upstairs. A girl. I looked up and one of the back windows was open. I couldn’t see everything at first, just shadows. Then I saw her.”

He nodded at Valerie.

“She was in a chair. Not like this one. A straight chair. She was trying to move but she looked drugged or half asleep. Your fiancée was in front of her. There was another woman there too, in scrubs. They had clippers.”

Ernest’s skin went cold.

“No.”

Nico’s jaw tightened. “She said, ‘You want your father to believe you’re dying? Then you have to look the part.’”

Valerie shut her eyes.

A tear slid from beneath her lashes.

Ernest turned to her fully. “Valerie.”

Her mouth worked. No sound.

But she was crying.

Not the blank, exhausted tears he had seen on bad nights when she seemed lost inside pain.

These were different.

Recognition.

Fear.

Memory.

Truth.

He knelt so fast his knee hit stone. “Valerie, look at me.”

Her eyes opened.

He swallowed hard. “Did Celeste shave your head?”

For one terrible second, Valerie simply stared.

Then, with visible effort, she moved her fingers.

Once.

Twice.

A weak, shaking yes.

Ernest’s heart slammed so violently he thought he might black out.

He looked back at Nico. “Tell me everything.”

An hour later, Ernest had Valerie in a private suite at St. Vincent’s East under another name, with two armed Sterling security men outside the hall and strict orders that no one—not Celeste, not her assistant, not Dr. Adrian Pike, not anybody connected to the house—was to be allowed near his daughter.

He did not bring her to the hospital Celeste had chosen.

He did not call the doctor Celeste trusted.

He called Helen Morris.

Helen had been Valerie’s pediatrician before Ernest became too rich for ordinary routines and too busy to notice when ordinary things disappeared. She had known Valerie since infancy. She had known Ernest’s late wife, Lena. She had once told him, in a tone as flat as a knife, that money made men confuse access with wisdom.

When she walked into the suite and saw Valerie, she stopped dead.

Then she turned to Ernest.

“What happened to this child?”

Not “your daughter.”

Not “her.”

This child.

The accusation in it struck deeper than a scream.

Ernest handed her every file he had. Lab results. Specialist notes. Prescription lists. Imaging reports. Consultation summaries. The whole polished stack Celeste had organized so beautifully in pale leather folders.

Helen took one look and said, “Who assembled these?”

“Celeste.”

“Who chose the specialists?”

“Mostly Celeste and Dr. Pike.”

Helen’s expression changed.

Not surprise.

Something worse.

Professional suspicion.

“Get me a full blood panel,” she told the nurse. “And page toxicology. I want independent imaging review. Everything repeated.”

Ernest stared at her. “You think those records are false?”

“I think too many of them read like they were written to be read by family, not physicians.” She flipped a page. “This terminology is sloppy. This progression doesn’t track. These medication changes make no sense together. And this”—she tapped a report—“is supposed to support a diagnosis of severe systemic decline, yet it somehow says almost nothing concrete.”

Ernest felt the room tilt again.

“Helen…”

She looked at him with unvarnished fury. “How long has she been under the care of this Dr. Pike?”

“Three months.”

“Three months too long.”

Valerie stirred when the nurse approached to change the IV.

“No,” Helen said sharply. “Stop. Don’t hook up anything until I see the fluid myself.”

The nurse paused, confused, then handed the line over.

Helen examined the bag, the labels, the tubing. Her mouth hardened.

“What is it?” Ernest asked.

“This is not what her chart says she’s receiving.”

The words landed like concrete.

Ernest went still. “What is it then?”

“Basic hydration and a mild anti-nausea infusion.” Helen lifted her eyes to his. “Not the intensive treatment protocol this paperwork is implying.”

He had no breath.

No language.

No defense left.

Valerie turned her head toward him weakly, and in her face he suddenly saw every moment he had missed.

The times Celeste had said, Don’t upset her by asking too many questions.

The times she had said, She’s embarrassed for you to see her like this.

The times she had intercepted his concern with practiced softness.

She’s sleeping.

She’s in pain.

She’ll talk tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

And while he waited for tomorrow, his daughter had been disappearing in front of him.

By midnight, Helen had the first set of answers.

Valerie was severely malnourished.

She was dehydrated.

She had high levels of sedating medication in her system—medication that had not been properly documented in the files Celeste had given Ernest.

There was no evidence of the catastrophic illness he had been led to believe was destroying her.

No confirmed terminal disease.

No treatment pattern that matched the story.

No medical reason her head should have been shaved.

No medical reason she should have been isolated.

No medical reason she should have been made to look as though death was sitting beside her chair.

Ernest sat in Helen’s office across from her while rain tapped at the window and traffic glowed red beneath the hospital glass.

“She can recover?” he asked, and hated how broken his voice sounded.

Helen exhaled slowly. “Yes. But I need you to hear the whole sentence. She can recover if the harm stops now.”

He shut his eyes.

“Helen… I was there.”

“No,” Helen said coldly. “You were adjacent.”

He said nothing.

Because she was right.

Because he had been in the house, but not present.

In the room, but not inside the truth.

Valerie had gotten sick gradually—dizzy spells, nausea, exhaustion, headaches. Celeste had been the first to take charge, the first to say the school nurse was incompetent, the first to recommend Dr. Pike, the first to insist stress from grief and school pressure made outside interference dangerous.

At first Ernest had been grateful.

Celeste remembered schedules.

Celeste coordinated appointments.

Celeste brought soups upstairs.

Celeste lowered lights and spoke in soothing tones and made herself indispensable.

And because Ernest had spent his life rewarding competence wherever he found it, he had confused control with care.

“Call the police,” he said.

“I already spoke to hospital legal,” Helen replied. “But if you want this to hold, you need evidence beyond bad medical management. You need to know motive. You need to know who helped her.”

Ernest’s hands curled into fists. “Then I’ll get it.”

Helen studied him for a moment. “Before you go after Celeste, talk to Valerie while she’s lucid. Don’t fill in blanks for her. Let her tell you.”

He nodded.

Then he looked at the door to Valerie’s suite. “What if she doesn’t want to see me?”

Helen was silent for a moment.

“Then you sit outside until she does.”

Valerie woke just after two in the morning.

She looked disoriented at first, then frightened when she saw a different room.

Ernest stood immediately from the chair beside her bed. “Valerie. It’s me.”

Her breathing quickened.

He held up both hands, palms open, like he was approaching a wounded animal. “You’re safe. Listen to me. You’re safe. Helen’s here. Not Pike. Not Celeste.”

At Celeste’s name, a tremor went through her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “She doesn’t know where you are.”

Valerie stared at him for several seconds.

Then, in a voice so dry it barely existed, she whispered, “Really?”

The word nearly destroyed him.

He pulled a chair closer but didn’t touch her yet. “Really.”

Her eyes filled.

For a long time, neither of them spoke.

Then Ernest said the hardest thing he had ever said in his life.

“I need you to tell me what I missed.”

Valerie’s throat moved as she swallowed. Her gaze drifted toward the dark window, then back to him.

“It started… before I got weak.”

He leaned forward.

“She was stealing.”

“Celeste?”

Valerie nodded faintly. “From the foundation.”

The Sterling Arts Foundation had been Lena’s project—an ambitious citywide program funding music, theater, and visual arts for underfunded public schools. After Lena died, Ernest kept it alive because it had been hers. When Valerie turned eighteen, she was supposed to take a formal junior seat on the board.

“She thought I didn’t know the numbers,” Valerie whispered. “But Mom used to show me everything. The grants. The budgets. How to read expenses. She said if you love something, you learn how it survives.”

Ernest’s chest tightened.

Of course Lena had taught her that.

Of course Valerie had noticed what he had not.

“I saw transfers,” Valerie continued. “Small ones at first. Then bigger. Event invoices that didn’t match. Payments to companies that only existed on paper. I asked Celeste about one because her signature was on it.”

“What did she say?”

Valerie looked at the blanket. “She smiled.”

It was such a simple sentence, and somehow more chilling than anything else.

“She asked if I was accusing her,” Valerie said. “I said I was asking. She said I was emotional because I still hadn’t accepted her. Then she told me not to go through adult files.”

Ernest closed his eyes briefly.

“And after that?”

Valerie’s fingers twisted weakly in the sheet. “A week later I got sick at school.”

Nausea. Dizziness. A collapse in the hallway.

Dr. Pike was brought in.

Rest was ordered.

Then stricter rest.

Then home supervision.

Then medications.

Then diets.

Then special teas and supplements Celeste personally prepared.

Valerie’s friends were told not to visit because her immune system was compromised.

Her phone began disappearing for “screen breaks.”

Her schoolwork was postponed.

Every protest she made was interpreted as irritability.

Every attempt to explain was called confusion.

“She’d say things in front of you,” Valerie whispered, “like ‘It’s okay, sweetheart, Daddy knows you’re not yourself right now.’ And if I tried to say she was lying, I’d sound crazy because I was so tired all the time.”

Ernest gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles went white.

“Why didn’t you tell me when we were alone?”

Valerie looked at him then, straight on, and the answer cut him open.

“We weren’t alone.”

He said nothing.

Because again, she was right.

He had sat by her bed many nights, but Celeste was always in the doorway, at the medicine cart, beside the pillows, adjusting curtains, hovering like a soft-spoken warden.

“She told me if I fought her, she’d tell you I was having psychiatric breaks,” Valerie said. “That grief sometimes turns girls dramatic. That rich girls go unstable. She said Pike would support whatever she said, and you’d believe the calm adult over the sick kid.”

A tear slid down Ernest’s face before he realized it was there.

Valerie watched it with an expression so exhausted it seemed older than pity.

“I tried,” she whispered. “I really did.”

“I know.” His voice cracked. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she said, with immense effort, “The hair…”

He leaned in.

“She said bald girls look fragile. People stop asking questions when they see bald.”

His stomach turned.

“She said you’d stop hoping for miracles and start preparing for grief. And grief,” Valerie whispered, “makes people sign things.”

Ernest froze.

“What things?”

Her eyes moved to his face carefully, searching whether he could bear the answer.

“Prenup changes. Power of attorney drafts. Foundation interim papers. She brought files into the room and talked while I was half asleep. She said once we were married, she’d make sure the board stayed ‘stable’ after I was gone.”

Gone.

Not if you were gone.

After.

Ernest stood so suddenly the chair scraped the floor.

Valerie flinched.

He stopped at once, horrified with himself. “No, no, baby, not at you. Never at you.”

She pressed trembling fingers to her mouth.

He forced himself to breathe, then sat down again more slowly.

“Tell me about the night she shaved your head.”

Valerie shut her eyes.

When she spoke, each word came like it hurt.

“You were in Chicago. There was a storm. Power flickered. I was awake but couldn’t move right. She came in with Pike’s nurse—Sonia. Said my fever matted my hair.” Valerie’s mouth twisted with disgust. “I knew that was stupid. I said no. She leaned down and said, ‘Your father is easier to guide when he’s afraid.’”

Ernest felt something savage and cold settle inside him.

Valerie continued, voice shaking. “She told Sonia to hold my shoulders. I tried to scream but my mouth was numb. I knocked my old phone off the side table because it was under the blanket. I thought maybe… maybe somebody would find it.”

Nico.

“She shaved it all,” Valerie whispered. “And when it was done, she held up a mirror and said, ‘Now you finally look believable.’”

The room went silent.

Ernest bowed his head.

For the first time in decades, he could not speak because rage had moved beyond words.

At last he said, “You are never going back into that house while she’s in it.”

Valerie opened her eyes. “You believe me now?”

The “now” in that sentence would stay with him for the rest of his life.

“Yes,” he said. “Completely.”

She studied him.

Then, after a long moment, her fingers moved weakly across the sheet toward him.

Ernest took her hand in both of his.

She was still too thin. Still too cold. Still too fragile.

But for the first time in months, she did not pull away.

By morning, Ernest Sterling was no longer a grieving father sleepwalking through a medical nightmare.

He was himself again.

And for Celeste Whitmore, that would become the worst thing in the world.

He started with the foundation.

By eight o’clock, he had his chief financial officer, two forensic accountants, and outside counsel locked in a conference room at Sterling Tower with instructions to freeze every discretionary transfer tied to Celeste’s event management channels. No one was told the full reason. Only that he wanted a silent audit and that if anyone tipped Celeste off, they were finished.

Within two hours, irregularities surfaced.

Duplicate invoices.

Ghost vendors.

Inflated gala expenditures.

Consulting fees routed through shell entities with mailing addresses leading to empty co-working desks and one UPS box in New Jersey.

By noon, one of the shell companies traced back to a trust whose secondary signatory was Celeste’s younger brother.

By one-thirty, Ernest had pulled historic access logs from the townhouse server.

Celeste had overridden medication cabinet security thirty-nine times in six weeks.

Dr. Pike’s nurse, Sonia Calder, had entered the house on nights not reflected in the treatment schedule.

The kitchen camera—which Celeste thought had been disabled during remodeling—still stored archived footage in the cloud. In one clip, Celeste was seen throwing away a tray of soup after telling Ernest Valerie had eaten half of it. In another, she poured crushed pills from an unlabeled envelope into a porcelain teapot.

Ernest watched that clip once.

Then once more.

Then he told legal to preserve every second of it for the police.

Still, what shook him most came from the staff he had allowed Celeste to replace.

Marta Ruiz, the longtime housekeeper who had worked for the Sterlings since Valerie was five, had been dismissed “for insubordination” six weeks earlier. Ernest met her in a small Midtown diner because she refused to step foot in any Sterling property while Celeste’s perfume might still be lingering there.

Marta was in her sixties, compact and steel-eyed, and she did not waste time with politeness.

“I told you that woman was poison,” she said as soon as she sat down.

Ernest took it without flinching. “You did.”

“You thought I was jealous.”

“I did.”

She shook her head in disgust. “No. I thought your daughter looked scared every time Miss Celeste entered a room, and I’ve raised enough children to know the difference between sickness and fear.”

Ernest’s jaw tightened. “What did you see?”

Marta told him.

Valerie refusing tea until Celeste insisted.

Valerie whispering to Marta once, “Please don’t leave me alone with her.”

Celeste ordering staff rotations changed so no one person stayed long enough upstairs to notice patterns.

Sonia arriving after midnight with unmarked bags.

And one afternoon—three days before Marta was fired—Valerie, weak and shaking, trying to press a folded piece of paper into Marta’s hand in the hallway.

Celeste stepped out of the library and saw it.

Marta never got the note.

By that evening, Ernest had been told Marta was upsetting the patient and should be let go.

“I should’ve gone to the police then,” Marta said bitterly. “But rich people always make you feel like you need proof before they’ll hear the truth.”

Ernest looked at the table between them and said, “You’re talking to one.”

Marta’s face softened only slightly.

“Is Valerie alive?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Marta closed her eyes and whispered, “Thank God.”

Nico became the missing piece Ernest had never imagined he would need.

He found him exactly where the boy said he’d be: beneath a stone arcade near the park, sharing a paper bag of pretzels with two smaller kids and reading a torn paperback with the kind of focus wealthy children were always praised for and poor children were expected to hide.

Ernest approached alone this time.

Nico looked up, stiffened, then stood.

“You don’t have to run,” Ernest said.

“I wasn’t.”

Ernest nodded. “My daughter’s safe.”

Some of the tension left Nico’s shoulders.

“Good.”

“Doctors confirmed she wasn’t dying.” Ernest swallowed. “She was being drugged and controlled.”

Nico lowered his gaze. “I know.”

The statement was not arrogant.

Just sad.

Ernest sat on the opposite end of the stone ledge. “I owe you more than I can say.”

Nico shrugged. “You don’t owe me.”

“I do.”

Nico hesitated, then said, “Just make sure she knows somebody listened.”

Ernest stared at him.

That, more than anything, told him who this boy really was.

Not a hustler.

Not an opportunist.

Just a child who knew what it meant when no one listened in time.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” Ernest said.

Nico did.

The back alley.

The open service window.

The clippers.

Celeste’s voice.

Valerie’s attempts to move.

The second woman holding her shoulders.

Then, after it was over, Celeste carrying a black trash bag to the service exit.

“She dropped something,” Nico said. “The phone was under the steps. But there was something else too.”

“What?”

Nico reached into his backpack and pulled out a silk ribbon, black and expensive-looking despite the grime on it.

Ernest went still.

Valerie used to tie her ponytail with those.

“This was stuck to the bag when it tore,” Nico said. “I kept it because I thought maybe…” He trailed off. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody would need proof.”

Ernest took the ribbon carefully.

His throat burned.

“Nico,” he said, “where are your parents?”

The boy’s face closed at once.

“Gone.”

“Gone how?”

Nico looked away toward the fountain. “Mom died two winters ago. Overdose. Dad was never really in it. Foster homes didn’t stick.”

Ernest nodded slowly. “And school?”

“I go when I can.”

“When you can.”

Nico gave him a dry half-smile. “You noticed.”

Ernest was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’m going to ask you to do something difficult. The police may need your statement.”

Nico’s fingers tightened on the strap of his backpack. “Will she know it was me?”

“Celeste?”

He nodded.

“No,” Ernest said. “Not unless you choose it.”

Nico thought about it, then said, “I’ll do it if it helps Valerie.”

Ernest looked at the boy who had been invisible to a thousand passing adults and felt, with cutting clarity, that the child who had protected his daughter was one his city had failed daily.

“We’ll do this properly,” Ernest said.

Nico frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not going back to sleeping under arches tonight.”

Celeste called Ernest forty-one times that day.

He answered on the forty-second.

“Ernest,” she breathed, sounding equal parts worried and offended, “where have you been? Helen Morris’s office refused to tell me anything, and when I went to the townhouse Valerie was gone. Security wouldn’t let me in my own home.”

“Not your home,” he said.

A silence followed.

Then: “I’m sorry?”

He leaned back in his office chair and looked out over Manhattan while his legal team prepared the arrest packet downstairs.

“You heard me.”

Her voice softened instantly, the one he had once mistaken for refinement. “Darling, I know you’re under terrible strain. This situation with Valerie is making everyone emotional—”

“Stop using my daughter’s name.”

A pause.

Then, more careful now, “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

He almost admired the nerve of it.

Almost.

“I’m not accusing you of anything on the phone,” he said. “I’m inviting you to the engagement dinner you wanted so badly.”

She was silent.

He could practically hear her recalculating.

“You still want to go through with that?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ernest said. “Tonight. Seven-thirty. The penthouse.”